Over the course of time, a pleasant showering experience was turning into an exfoliation treatment. What I mean by this is that the water was coming out with such fury that it hurt!

At first, I thought it was just me. Maybe my skin got more sensitive? Maybe the water was too hot? I was confused. Then, Austin mentioned something about how it was hurting him too. Whew- I wasn’t crazy!

Upon closer examination, I realized that hard water deposits were clogging up our shower head holes- making the water come out at an uncomfortable speed. Ouch.

Anyway, I recalled reading somewhere that if you soak your shower head in vinegar and water, it dissolves the hard water deposits. We went to work trying to remove the shower head. We had wrenches, pliers, and other random tools out. Our efforts were fruitless. After realizing that the stubborn shower head was not willing to move, we decided to bring the vinegar water to it. Hence, the ziplocked bag over the shower head.

We mixed half cup of vinegar and half cup of water. Let it soak overnight. Despite the nasty smell, it was a success!

We can once again enjoy the gentle pitter patter of water upon our backs.

A chapter of our lives has come to a close. After a nine month stretch, Austin and I are finally done listening to the Harry Potter series.

We began our journey with Harry Potter way back in January on our 13 hour drive to Colorado. I think we had a total of five conversations in the 26 hours of driving there and back because we were so engrossed into listening to the story.

Jim Dale, the reader of the audio books makes them come to life in an entirely different way than reading them.

Since then, Harry Potter and his friends have joined us in almost every road trip or plane ride.

He got us through the long flights to and from Jamaica and Alaska. He joined us on most trips to St. Louis or Camdenton to visit the families. He was part of countless car rides and road trips.

Harry also joined us on many random occasions in our first year of marriage:

During games of Nertz, our favorite card game.

On trips to Andy’s frozen custard.

While cleaning the house. This made it so much more fun!

While painting our living room.

Sometimes at night before we fell asleep.

Cooking meals together…and sometimes while we ate the meal.

It’s sad to say goodbye to our friends at Hogwarts. I almost feel as though they were a big part of our first year of marriage. That’s so cheesy but slightly true.

My fellow Harry Potter readers can relate to the bitter sweet feeling when the last page is turned. J.K. Rowling is a literary genius in my humble opinion. We’ve truly been blessed by her talent.

Since I hardly have ANY purses and bags in my life, (I can hear my husband’s groan of disapproval from the other room) I thought I would try a tutorial that I found on I Make Stuff‘s blog. Here’s what I came up with.

Here are some of the fun details:

I made a ruffle on one of the straps. On the other, I used one of my fun stitches on my sewing machine to give it a personal touch.

I also made some pockets on the inside of each bag. Good places to stash my wallet, pens, books, etc.

It was a pretty fun project! I’m going to make a tutorial soon so keep an eye out for that if you’re in to that sort of thing.